Eight organizations get the greenlight to develop potentially groundbreaking technologies that would make future fighting vehicles more mobile, effective, safe and affordable

outreach@darpa.mil

4/26/2016

Today’s ground-based armored fighting vehicles are better protected than ever, but face a constantly evolving threat: weapons increasingly effective at piercing armor. While adding more armor has provided incremental increases in protection, it has also hobbled vehicle speed and mobility and ballooned development and deployment costs. To help reverse this trend, DARPA’s Ground X-Vehicle Technology (GXV-T) program recently awarded contracts to eight organizations.

“We’re exploring a variety of potentially groundbreaking technologies, all of which are designed to improve vehicle mobility, vehicle survivability and crew safety and performance without piling on armor,” said Maj. Christopher Orlowski, DARPA program manager. “DARPA’s performers for GXV-T are helping defy the ‘more armor equals better protection’ axiom that has constrained armored ground vehicle design for the past 100 years, and are paving the way toward innovative, disruptive vehicles for the 21st Century and beyond.”

DARPA has awarded contracts for GXV-T to the following organizations:

Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, Pa.)

Honeywell International Inc. (Phoenix, Ariz.)

Leidos (San Diego, Calif.)

Pratt & Miller (New Hudson, Mich.)

QinetiQ Inc. (QinetiQ UK, Farnborough, United Kingdom)

Raytheon BBN (Cambridge, Mass.)

Southwest Research Institute (San Antonio, Tex.)

SRI International (Menlo Park, Calif.)

GXV-T is pursuing research in the following four technical areas:

Radically Enhanced Mobility—Ability to traverse diverse off-road terrain, including slopes and various elevations. Capabilities of interest include revolutionary wheel/track and suspension technologies that would enable greater terrain access and faster travel both on- and off-road compared to existing ground vehicles.

Survivability through Agility—Autonomously avoid incoming threats without harming occupants through technologies that enable, for example, agile motion and active repositioning of armor. Capabilities of interest include vertical and horizontal movement of armor to defeat incoming threats in real time.

Crew Augmentation—Improved physical and electronically assisted situational awareness for crew and passengers; semi-autonomous driver assistance and automation of key crew functions similar to capabilities found in modern commercial airplane cockpits. Capabilities of interest include high-resolution, 360-degree visualization of data from multiple onboard sensors and technologies to support closed-cockpit vehicle operations.

Signature Management—Reduction of detectable signatures, including visible, infrared (IR), acoustic and electromagnetic (EM). Capabilities of interest include improved ways to avoid detection and engagement by adversaries.

The U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps have expressed interest in future GXV-T capabilities.

Image Caption: DARPA has awarded contracts for the Ground X-Vehicle Technology (GXV-T) program to eight organizations. The program seeks to develop groundbreaking technologies that would make future armored fighting vehicles significantly more mobile, effective, safe and affordable. Click below for a high-resolution image.

Images

Selected DARPA Achievements

In the early days of DARPA’s work on stealth technology, Have Blue, a prototype of what would become the F-117A, first flew successfully in 1977. The success of the F-117A program marked the beginning of the stealth revolution, which has had enormous benefits for national security.

ARPA research played a central role in launching the Information Revolution. The agency developed and furthered much of the conceptual basis for the ARPANET—prototypical communications network launched nearly half a century ago—and invented the digital protocols that gave birth to the Internet.

This is an official U.S. Department of Defense website sponsored by the
Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency.

You are now leaving the DARPA.mil website that is under the control and
management of DARPA. The appearance of hyperlinks does not constitute
endorsement by DARPA of non-U.S. Government sites or the information,
products, or services contained therein. Although DARPA may or may not
use these sites as additional distribution channels for Department of
Defense information, it does not exercise editorial control over all of
the information that you may find at these locations. Such links are
provided consistent with the stated purpose of this website.